"A researcher using tweezers located and removed the problem: a 2-in. long moth."

Longform posted a link to a 1984 cover story from Time magazine about the growing importance of software designed for personal computers. It’s a pretty standard story of the era, but it contains one interesting fact: It explains how the phrase “computer bug” was coined. Maybe everyone else on the planet knows this story, but I didn’t. An excerpt:

“Grace Hopper, one of the pioneer programmers, created COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language), which is the most widely used programming language for mainframe computers.

Now 77, Hopper works at the U.S. Navy’s computer center in Washington. Since the 1982 retirement of Admiral Hyman Rickover at 82, Commodore Hopper is the Navy’s oldest officer on active duty.

She gets credit for coining the name of a ubiquitous computer phenomenon: the bug. In August 1945, while she and some associates were working at Harvard on an experimental machine called the Mark I, a circuit malfunctioned. A researcher using tweezers located and removed the problem: a 2-in. long moth. Hopper taped the offending insect into her logbook. Says she: ‘From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.’

(The moth is still under tape along with records of the experiment at the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Va.)”

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